


Exwhylia: A Romance of Many Dimensions

by IsoscelesMonster



Series: Eternities and Cycles [2]
Category: Flatland - Edwin A. Abbott, Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 15:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6290671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IsoscelesMonster/pseuds/IsoscelesMonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stanford Pines finds himself in a dimension with a very unique set of rules, and makes a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exwhylia: A Romance of Many Dimensions

_When traveling between dimensions for years upon years, watching stars die and galaxies form, certain concepts begin to lose meaning in various way. Some, like ‘Monday’ or ‘Filbrick’ fade into the background, stirring no profound emotion. Others even cease to exist – or are lost to poor memory and this Author’s lack of a pen._

_‘Home’, for example, did not disappear. Instead, one day, it became an idea without a tether. An idea without images or sounds to tie it to reality. Once, there was a morning with tea and sunshine, but the remembered heat of sunshine has been long lost and the smell of that tea even more so. Instead, the scent of laser charred cloth and the aches of an aging body allow more primal concepts to become all-consuming. Concepts like ‘survival’ – which, to give due credit, can become more complex than any master's thesis._

_Concepts also die in much more literal ways. The laws of physics as mankind knows them have bent, broken, stretched beyond all recognition. Distance, as an example, has been distorted. Everything once familiar is impossibly far away. And then, again, distance disproves itself, for all that once was still is._

_The home which had ceased to be anything but a vague and impossible ideal lay on the other side of such a gap, a near-far place that existed and yet didn't._

_Right there, around the corner, a hair’s breadth beyond reach, a second too late –_

_Seconds, minutes, centuries. Time, perhaps, changed the most._

_Time has always been important. Time has always been grounding. There has always been a structure, an order, to life within its confines – scheduled luncheons and dinners, presentations and grant meetings, weddings and funerals.  
None of which, of course, occurred within the last few years, but Time still remained a constant companion. _

_No more. Time is… an illusion. The Universe is a--_

_Though none of this is strictly accurate. Can a concept cease to exist? Could its death ever truly be proven? Time merely loses relevance when one stands outside of it, between the streams where it holds sway, separate from the goings on of any individual universe. Capable of reentering at any point where the water stutters just right—_

_How to explain it, explain any of this? Maybe it would make more sense with fish._

_Take the idea of streams, then. Time, distance, dimensions… The multiverse is an ever diverging river. Paths too different flow off in their own directions, rarely if ever to meet again. These are streams of thought and action, repercussions capable of changing worlds, galaxies._

_Say, for the purpose of this metaphor, each universe is an individual stream. Say that anything (un)lucky enough to be sentient is a fish, living in one of those streams._

_This is simplified. It would be equally valid to compare it to a multitude of bubbles, or badly made quilts. But then, fish don't swim in bubbles or quilts... at least, not in most universes.  
Ordinary fish are not able to breathe air. Nor can they walk. So they will spend their lives below the water’s surface. Barring rare circumstances out of the fish's control, the streams do not cross, so they are forever confined to their one, limited environment, their point in space and time. Neat, linear, logical, and all that can possibly be known. _

_Think again. Some fish from the anabantidae family can breathe air, shuffle along the land on their gill plates, and move on to a foreign stream. Once they have made that seemingly impossible journey, is there only one point in the flow, one stutter in the current where they must throw themselves in? Not at all. The climbing perch can go anywhere it wants, and it's the same for a cross dimensional traveler. Though when they begin to wonder how to get back—_

_After all, what does something so trivial as distance or the progression of events matter to someone capable of crossing the barrier between universes?_

_Note: One realises one may have been traveling the void for far too long when their mind begins to construct a ridiculous metaphor involving an incredibly obscure species of fish; an imaginary lecture to explain the complexities of inter-dimensional travel, directed at an aspiring undergrad class that one will, realistically, never see again._

_Another sign of prolonged exposure to the void: one begins to seek distractions. To, perhaps out of habit, note oddities. To seek a new 'familiar'._

_There very idea of familiarity is, as with everything else, varied across a functionally infinite multiverse. Even as concepts lose meaning for someone there is somewhere they have always meant something different. Somewhere they have never meant anything at all._

_An example, for those in the back sketching in their notebooks and not following--_

_There was, at one point in time, space, and distance, an oddity in the extreme. A universe unique among a myriad of dimensions, containing a world which lacked many seemingly every day concepts. A world, in fact, which lacked the concept of anything which wasn't flat._

_It was in this universe that Stanford Pines currently found himself._

**Author's Note:**

> Co-written with my friend Shiny, who came up with the initial idea and does a lot of our world-building (barring what we're lifting straight from Edwin Abbott, anyway.) and another friend who is my personal Ford and makes everything sound infinitely more like him. Please note the new title is a reference, and not an indication of shipping.


End file.
